Hello, all! I've been busy for awhile now...not just with the Meetup group I'm the organizer for, but now I'm on the host committee for the upcoming Creating Change conference, sponsored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, to be held here in Denver next February. I'm part of the subcommittee that will manage the Transgender Hospitality Suite, which will be a nice, welcoming place for our TG sisters and brothers to spend some time. I have a couple of things to ask.
First, if you're in the general Denver area and would like to volunteer to help, please drop me a PM and I can put you in touch with the chair of our subcommittee and our host committee chair sponsor. I'd like to see the people responsible for the suite, insofar as possible, be transgender themselves. (That means anybody on the transgender spectrum.) But we won't turn cisgender allies down.
Second, if you were to be an attendee of this conference (and maybe you are), what sorts of things would you want to have a transgender hospitality suite provide? Videos? Games? Other activities? Just a friendly ear to listen and share? (Snacks and drinks are already a given.) We're looking for what we ought to plan for the five days this conference will be running.
Anything you can tell me will be of help; this is my first time working with such a major conference, and I don't mind telling you I could use the advice! Thanks in advance!
- Amy
I'm afraid Denver is probably just too far for me but I feel like it would be a worthy cause to support if I were closer - I hope you'll get plenty of local talent to support you, I would think one of the important aspects of a hospitality suite is to ensure you have plenty of well-briefed volunteers to support folk on entry - to welcome them, host them and chat enough to get them introduced to others... There's nothing worse than not having enough warm bodies around to properly engage people. Informative and entertaining videos are good too and can be good icebreakers - I would have guessed that the nature of the conference is such that your attendees are largely more experienced activists and campaigners and would therefore be looking more for networking opportunities rather than raw info... (just a supposition - I might be wrong.. 
) - so while you would want to be providing enough material or educational opportunities for folk that might not have a good understanding of TG issues and perspectives, you'd want to make the environment conducive to networking... so volunteers who could facilitate this and an environment that makes folk feel comfortable and will want to hang around... You could try scheduled activities so that there is an event or something to draw people back at different times..? The activities will depend on what your budget is like... 
Originally Posted by AmyGaleRT
